Supporting my child's tertiary education

In addition to the professionals who are working to assist individuals with an ASD, families also face a number of challenges as they strive to meet the service needs of their children as they transition to or attend university or TAFE.

My child is over 18 years of age

Your child is legally an adult when he/she reaches 18 years of age, regardless of their disability and level of functioning.

This ‘independence’ can create difficulties for parents when they want to support their children in tertiary education. Under the law, university or TAFE staff cannot give parents any specific information about their adult child due to privacy issues. Staff can, however, inform parents about the general types of support their institute has available for any student with a disability.

Many institutions will allow staff to talk to parents about their child’s education if consent has been obtained from the student. Generally written consent is required, however some staff may prefer not to communicate directly with parents.

Please check with your child’s institution to find out about their policy and consent requirements.

Collaborating with staff

Knowledge about ASD may differ between individual staff members. This could be due to differences in their experience of working with people diagnosed with an ASD. If you feel that staff are not well informed, you can refer them to the staff information pages.

Staff time and resources can often be limited due to their work commitments. However, when staff are able and willing to take time to work closely with parents of students with ASD, they comment about the usefulness of doing so.

Here are some examples from research studies showing what staff had to say about working with parents:

Staff:The support that I’m getting is from the parents. The most information that I get is we have a parent says, this is my son. He has Asperger’s. Really communicating with the mother and the student at the same time is really good. Getting the information off them saying, look, he can do this, he can’t do that. If you do this, this won’t work, because it’s so specific.

Staff:I have a young man who is diagnosed and self-disclosed. I have felt that working as part of a team [with the student and the parent] from the onset has assisted all involved because we've collaborated and decisions that have been made, have been made in a more timely manner…I did record a lot of the information during the meetings and I also requested with the student's permission that the parent be involved. I was lucky enough that I knew – the rapport had been built prior to suggesting these meetings and the student had disclosed that he was very close to his mother. So the mother was very much involved.

If you believe your child will only succeed in tertiary education with your support and that both of you should work closely with your child’s educators, it may be helpful to: